Business
Some dockworkers earn more than $400,000 a year
From The Center Square
Some longshoreman regularly earn more than the president of the United States along with most other U.S. workers.
Under the existing contract with the East Coast union, a top-scale longshoreman could earn up to $39 an hour, which translates to about $81,000 a year. However, many workers take overtime and extra shifts that have higher rates.
Some 50,000 International Longshoremen’s Association members went on strike Tuesday against the East and Gulf Coast ports, hampering the flow of goods in what some predict could be the most disruptive strike in decades.
Dockworkers often earn more than $100,000 a year because of work rules and overtime requirements.
More than half of 3,726 dockworkers at the Port of New York and New Jersey earned more than $150,000 in the fiscal year that ended in 2020, according to the port’s regulator, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. About one in five dockworkers at the port earned more than $250,000 that year.
Eighteen dockworkers brought in more than $450,000 that year – more than the annual salary as the U.S. President ($400,000) and more than most U.S. workers. The real median household income for all Americans was $74,580 in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Some dockworkers get paid even if they don’t work.
“Every terminal within the Port still has special compensation packages given to certain ILA longshore workers, the majority of whom are white males connected to organized crime figures or union leadership,” according to the Commission’s 2019-2020 annual report. “Based on the industry’s reported figures, the Commission has again identified over 590 individuals who collectively received over $147.6 million dollars last year in outsized salaries, or for hours they never worked.”
The report noted the special packages were not memorialized in the applicable collective bargaining agreements. Rather than eliminate or cap them, the NYSA and ILA negotiated a 2013 Memorandum of Settlement of Local Conditions in the Port of New York-New Jersey. That guarantees special packages to certain people. Those individuals are paid for hours not worked or hours worked by others, as long as they are at the Port for 40 hours each week, according to the Commission’s report.
Such conditions have endured for decades, according to the Commission’s report.
“The hearings revealed that the hiring, training and promotion practices of the industry led to low-show jobs, favoritism and nepotism, the abusive and illogical interpretation of collective bargaining agreements, and the impact of those practices both on the competitiveness of the Port and on the morale and career prospects of decent, hard-working Port employees,” according to the report. “Connected individuals are awarded high paying, low-show or no-work special compensation packages, in some cases earning salaries in excess of $500,000. Such positions were overwhelmingly given to white males connected to organized crime figures or union leadership.”
The ongoing strike, which extends from Maine to Texas, could affect everything from bananas to European beer and automobiles.
The International Longshoremen’s Association blamed the United States Maritime Alliance for refusing a contract offer.
It’s the first strike at these ports since 1977. The strike will affect 36 U.S. ports handling about half of U.S. ocean imports. Included are Boston, New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia.
Negotiations have been tense since June. The disagreement is between the International Longshore Association and Warehouse Union, which represents port workers across the country, and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents terminal operators and ocean carriers.
Wages of East and Gulf coast workers are a base wage of $39 an hour after six years. The union is asking for a 77% pay increase over six years. It is also asking for more restrictions and bans on the automation of cranes, gates, and container movements used to load or unload cargo.
Brett Rowland
Investigative Reporter
From LifeSiteNews
The Center for Innovative Public Health Research’s website suggests teenage girls make their ‘own decisions’ about sex and not let their parents know if they don’t want to.
For almost a decade, the U.S. government funded a group that actively works to teach kids how to use sex toys and then keep them hidden from their parents to the tune of $22 million.
According to investigative reporter Hannah Grossman at the Manhattan Institute, The Center for Innovative Public Health Research (CIPHR) has been educating minors about sex toys with public funds.
Records show that the millions given to the group since 2016, according to its website, go toward “health education programs” that “promote positive human development.”
However, the actual contents of the programs, as can be seen from comments from CIPHR CEO Michele Ybarra, seem to suggest that its idea of “human” development is skewed toward radical sex education doctrine.
In 2017, CIPHR launched Girl2Girl, which is funded by federal money to promote “sex-ed program just for teen girls who are into girls.” Its website lets users, who are girls between ages 14 and 16, sign up for “daily text messages … about things like sex with girls and boys.”
The actual content of some of the messages is very concerning. Its website notes that some of the texts talk about “lube and sex toys” as well as “the different types of sex and ways to increase pleasure.”
The website actively calls upon teenage girls to make their “own decisions” and not let their parents know if they don’t want to.
Grossman shared a video clip on X of Ybarra explaining how they educate minors about the use of “sex toys” and dealing with their parents if they are found out.
The clip, from a 2022 Brown University webinar, shows Ybarra telling researchers how to prepare “young person(s)” for her research.
She said if they are doing “focus groups,” she will ask them, “Okay, so what happens if somebody comes into the room and sees words like penis and sex toys on your screen — on your computer screen or on your phone? What if it’s your mom?’”
In 2023, CIPHR launched Transcendent Health, which is a sex-education program for minors who are gender confused. This initiative received $1.3 million of federal grant money that expired last month.
Grossman observed that the federal government “should not fund programs that send sexually explicit messages to minors and encourage them to conceal these communications from parents.”
She noted that in order to protect children and “prevent further harm,” U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services “should immediately cancel CIPHR’s active contract and deny its future grant applications.”
“By doing so, the Trump administration can send a clear message: Taxpayers will no longer foot the bill for perverted ‘research’ projects,” she noted.
The Trump administration has thus far, through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), exposed billions in government waste and fraud. Many such uses of taxpayer dollars are currently under review by the administration, including pro-abortion and pro-censorship activity through USAID, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda” through the National Science Foundation, and billions to left-wing “green energy” nonprofits through the Environmental Protection Agency.
Business
Canadian Police Raid Sophisticated Vancouver Fentanyl Labs, But Insist Millions of Pills Not Destined for U.S.
Sam Cooper
Mounties say labs outfitted with high-grade chemistry equipment and a trained chemist reveal transnational crime groups are advancing in technical sophistication and drug production capacity
Amid a growing trade war between Washington and Beijing, Canada—targeted alongside Mexico and China for special tariffs related to Chinese fentanyl supply chains—has dismantled a sophisticated network of fentanyl labs across British Columbia and arrested an academic lab chemist, the RCMP said Thursday.
At a press conference in Vancouver, senior investigators stood behind seized lab equipment and fentanyl supplies, telling reporters the operation had prevented millions of potentially lethal pills from reaching the streets.
“This interdiction has prevented several million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl from being produced and distributed across Canada,” said Cpl. Arash Seyed. But the presence of commercial-grade laboratory equipment at each of the sites—paired with the arrest of a suspect believed to have formal training in chemistry—signals an evolution in the capabilities of organized crime networks, with “progressively enhanced scientific and technical expertise among transnational organized crime groups involved in the production and distribution of illicit drugs,” Seyed added.
This investigation is ongoing, while the seized drugs, precursor chemicals, and other evidence continue to be processed, police said.
Recent Canadian data confirms the country has become an exporter of fentanyl, and experts identify British Columbia as the epicenter of clandestine labs supplied by Chinese precursors and linked to Mexican cartel distributors upstream.
In a statement that appears politically responsive to the evolving Trump trade threats, Assistant Commissioner David Teboul said, “There continues to be no evidence, in this case and others, that these labs are producing fentanyl for exportation into the United States.”
In late March, during coordinated raids across the suburban municipalities of Pitt Meadows, Mission, Aldergrove, Langley, and Richmond, investigators took down three clandestine fentanyl production sites.
The labs were described by the RCMP as “equipped with specialized chemical processing equipment often found in academic and professional research facilities.” Photos released by authorities show stainless steel reaction vessels, industrial filters, and what appear to be commercial-scale tablet presses and drying trays—pointing to mass production capabilities.
The takedown comes as Canada finds itself in the crosshairs of intensifying geopolitical tension.
Fentanyl remains the leading cause of drug-related deaths in Canada, with toxic supply chains increasingly linked to hybrid transnational networks involving Chinese chemical brokers and domestic Canadian producers.
RCMP said the sprawling B.C. lab probe was launched in the summer of 2023, with teams initiating an investigation into the importation of unregulated chemicals and commercial laboratory equipment that could be used for synthesizing illicit drugs including fentanyl, MDMA, and GHB.
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